Two Truths About Skin Fold Rashes — And The Products Being Sold To Women Who Have It.

This is for anyone who gets under boob rash or those awful skin fold rashes.

I cleared mine three times in six months with antifungal cream.

And every few weeks, I was reaching for the antifungal cream again.

If that sounds like you, please read this all the way through.

Because there are two things nobody told me about skin fold rash.

One is why it keeps coming back after the cream clears it.

The other is why everything I tried to keep it away didn't work either.

It started as a pink patch in the crease under my bust.

By summer it was red, raw and itchy. And by the end of the day, it had a smell.

My GP said what they always say. "Very common. Use an antifungal cream. Keep it dry."

So I did. And the cream worked. Within a week, it was gone.

Then every few weeks, it was back.

Cleared it. Back again. Cleared it. Back again.

Three times in six months.

I honestly thought I needed a stronger cream. Or that I was doing something wrong.

I was so tired of reaching for the antifungal cream every few weeks.

Here's what I didn't understand back then.

It was never really the cream.

The antifungal did its job. It cleared the fungal part of the rash.

But once the rash cleared, nothing underneath had actually changed.

The skin under my bust was still sitting damp and rubbing together for most of the day.

And once you've got a bra on, there's really not much air getting under there.

So the cream cleared it… and then my skin went straight back into the exact same damp, rubbing conditions that caused it in the first place.

That's why it came back every few weeks. 

Not because the cream was too weak. 

Because the conditions never changed.

So I thought, fine. Everyone keeps saying keep it dry. I'll work out how to actually do that.

I went looking for advice. Forums, Facebook groups, those threads where women swap what works.

And the advice was always the same: keep the area dry and stop the rubbing.

Made sense. So I tried what they recommended.

First, a thick barrier cream for the rubbing.

And to be fair, it did something. My skin had more slip. It didn't drag as much.

But underneath my bra, I was still sweating.

The area still felt damp for hours.

I'd stopped the rubbing a bit… but I hadn't done anything about the wetness.

Looking back, I was just making wet skin slide better.

So if a cream couldn't keep it dry, I tried something that was dry. Powder.

It felt lovely when it went on. Dry, soft, fresh.

Then I'd sweat. And by lunchtime it had gone damp and clumpy, basically a paste under my boobs.

I was back to wiping it away, drying underneath, and starting all over again.

Every day. Sometimes twice a day.

Of course it did.

Out came the antifungal cream. Again.

One night I was standing at my bathroom shelf looking at all this stuff I'd been putting under my boobs.

The antifungal. The barrier cream. The powder.

I picked up the anti-fungal cream and actually read the label.

It was around 65% water.

Hang on a minute.

"Keep it dry. Keep it dry. Keep it dry". That's all anyone had ever told me.

And the cream I was using to treat it was mostly water. 

The barrier cream was another thick cream sitting on top of the sweat. 

And the powder ended up wet anyway.

How am I supposed to keep this area dry when everything I'm putting under there either adds moisture, traps it underneath, or ends up wet anyway?

I was moaning about all this to a friend over lunch.

Her daughter is a wound-care nurse.

 She gets rashes herself on long shifts, and she uses a stick called INTACT.

She gave me one to try.

The first thing I did was read the label.

“100% water free.”

I asked her about it.

“That’s the important part,” she said.

It’s still an antifungal, but it’s delivered dry, so it doesn’t add more moisture back underneath.

And it has things like silica and tapioca in it that absorb the sweat as it builds up through the day.

Plus zinc oxide to help protect the skin where it rubs, and bisabolol to help soothe it.

“So you’re not just clearing the fungal part,” she said, “and then putting your skin straight back into the exact same damp, rubbing environment again.”

That was the difference I’d been missing...